


Blowing Off Steam

by ameliacareful



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Claire jokes about the guys having sex but there is no actual suggestion in the fic that they are, Claire's p.o.v., Domestic Violence, F Bombs, Gen, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, interpersonal violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-22
Updated: 2020-07-22
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:14:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25453714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ameliacareful/pseuds/ameliacareful
Summary: Thanks to blindswandive for a thoughtful and sensitive beta read.  I am not sure I've gotten this to where I want it, but it's a lot closer with their help.
Relationships: Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester
Comments: 40
Kudos: 110





	Blowing Off Steam

Claire wasn’t exactly naïve. She’d seen more than most people do in a lifetime. She was a mess, and she knew it. And she was a badass. 

She didn’t hero worship the Winchesters. Really. She didn’t. They were a couple of white guys with old school attitudes. Still, when she’d been working a job in Wisconsin with a guy, a poltergeist in a suburban home (don’t work poltergeists alone—you need one person to plant hex bags in the walls and another to cover their ass while the poltergeist throws sharp and heavy objects at them or weakens the floor joists so that you nearly go crashing out of the second floor master to the first floor) he’d been real impressed. 

“You can tell you got trained by them Winchesters,” Ben kept saying. Ben was a thickset thirty-something from Washington State, but not the Seattle part. The other part. Where men were men and chopped down trees or something.

“How come?” Claire asked. She thought he meant she had some technique that Sam and Dean had taught her.

“Cause you’re young but you’re good,” Ben said. He had an ax, like you’d use to split wood, and he used it to break a hole in the wallboard. The whole downstairs was gray. Tasteful in a really dull way. The bedroom had some clothes in a pile on the floor and too much stuff on one of the bedside tables; a pile of magazines and stuff that looked like it would make a little stuff landslide if you weren’t careful.

Claire had a baking sheet in one hand and a shotgun loaded with rock salt in the other and no matter how easy it looked to cock a shotgun with one hand in the movies, it was a bitch. 

The poltergeist threw a bedside lamp at them and Claire swatted it out of the way with the cookie sheet. Which was why it was worth having only one hand for the shotgun.

“Folks say all sorts of crazy things about them,” Ben said. He seemed like he wanted her to say something.

She didn’t know which thing he wanted her to say. They’ve both died a couple of times? They’re not human? They fuck each other? She was _pretty_ sure the last one was true. And the dying thing, at least according to the books. “They’re just guys,” she said.

“Basement,” Ben said, meaning he’d gotten the hex bag in place.

The poltergeist tried to throw them down the steps, but Claire threw salt all up and down them. Like salting your front steps when it snows. The basement was poured concrete, so Ben spackled the hex bags to the wall. It was ugly, but it did the trick.

“So, you hang with ‘em?” Ben asked.

Claire shrugged. She couldn’t really say that she hung with them, but she didn’t want to burst Ben’s bubble. 

“What’d they teach you?”

“Mostly credit card fraud,” she said honestly.

He’d laughed thinking she was being modest. Then he started on the last hex bag and the poltergeist lost its proverbial shit and Claire was busy while he finished. Then there was that huge power thingy and the poltergeist was gone. Ben seemed to have figured she didn’t have much to say on the subject of the Winchester Brothers™ so they shook hands and drove their separate ways.

She thought Sam and Dean would get a kick out of hearing it. Well, Dean would. Sam would get uncomfortable and consternated, which was its own kind of fun.

Now here they were, stopping at Jodie’s. Jodie was making a pot roast because she said they never ate home-cooked stuff. Dean was drinking and watching TV and Sam was reading a book. They weren’t talking much. They were eating late because Alex didn’t get off until seven. 

It was a little weird. Dean, who was watching Jeopardy, was the kind of relaxed that wasn’t really relaxed. Sam was sloping around like he was hoping no one would notice him. 

Claire stuck her head in the kitchen. “Need any help?” she asked.

Jody looked surprised. “What’s up?”

“Just want to help, is that so weird?”

Jody raised an eyebrow because yeah, it was kind of weird. Claire knew she’d been kind of feral after she got out of the residence, but it was a little embarrassing that Jody was shocked she would help. So, she chopped the salad and set the table. Alex was talking about going vegetarian, but she popped her head in, still in her scrubs from work, and made smells yummy noises. 

Claire set wine glasses on the table. 

“I wish I’d picked up a pie,” Jody said.

It was almost an hour later that Claire went to call the guys for dinner. Sam and Dean had disappeared from the living room.

She checked to see if they were out front, maybe getting something from the car, and then headed around the house to check the back yard. It was dusk, not yet dark. She heard Sam laugh.

It wasn’t a normal laugh, it was a little… a little fake maybe.

Dean growled something; she couldn’t understand what. Dean and the whole ‘talk in as low and manly a voice as you can.’ 

She stopped for a moment. Listening. She couldn’t have said why. She was starving and Jody had those rolls that you bought and baked in the oven so they were hot for dinner.

“Fuck you,” Dean said clearly.

“Just worrying about the health of your liver,” Sam said.

“Don’t fuck with my flask,” Dean said.

She didn’t hear Sam say anything but after a moment she heard what sounded like someone hitting someone.

She looked around the corner of the house.

The guys were at the back of the yard and Dean was on the balls of his feet, like he was ready for a fight. 

Sam laughed again, that weird laugh. He had Dean’s silver flask in his hand, held a little behind him, like he was playing some game of keep away.

“Stop screwing around,” Dean said.

“Can’t let you get drunk before dinner,” Sam said, “that would just be rude.”

Dean glowered. He was radiating violence. 

Claire had seen Sam run interference when Dean was like this. Had seen him put his hand on Cas’ arm to stop him from talking to Dean. 

But this time, Sam smirked.

It was like a matador. Dean moved so fast, and swung hard, meaning to hurt, and Sam shifted just enough to dodge—which meant Dean’s left caught him in the side of the face.

It should stop him, but it didn’t. Sam was not exactly graceful, but he had this athletic thing going on. He didn’t even put his hands up, he just moved, arms easy at his sides.

Dean swung again, not as hard, and Sam was sideways, slipping past it.

“Come on, old man, you’re drunk,” Sam said.

Which was winding Dean up more.

Stop, Claire thought. Stop.

But Sam didn’t stop. What was wrong with him? 

Dean was graceful and efficient. He barely seemed to move and Sam’s head snaped back, hair flying.

But Sam didn’t go down or quit. Still grinning, like he was baiting Dean. 

_Roadwork, Sam told her. Running means that you get in good shape and when something hits you and your brain is saying fall over, your legs will say, we’re fine, what’s the problem?_

Claire realized she’d taken a few steps into the backyard but neither Winchester noticed her. 

Sam’s head was up, and he was electric, still uncowed. “Come on,” he said. “Try. Try and hurt me, motherfucker.”

Dean was getting madder and madder and at last he was getting sloppier, although he landed a punch on Sam’s shoulder hard enough to drive Sam a little off balance and then it was like pinning a boxer in against the rope. 

Sam finally brought his hands up, trying to shield his face. 

Dean doubled down, one two, abdomen and face shots, some hitting.

Claire screamed, “STOP IT!”

Dean didn’t. He was lost in it. And Sam went down, curled up, just protecting himself as best he could. 

Claire kept screaming, sick.

Then Jody hit Dean from the side, a flying cop tackle. 

And it finally stopped.

#

The guys sat at the kitchen table. Sam had ice for his eye. He was a mess, lip split and swollen, and his eye was already bruising. He looked like he’d gone several rounds with something big and awful. 

Dean was staring at his hands. His knuckles were a little bloody.

“Are you concussed?” Jody asked Sam. 

“Just an argument,” Sam said, “nobody hurt. Just some sparring, letting off steam.”

Jody was furious. Neither Sam nor Dean could meet her gaze.

Dean looked…exhausted. Kind of teary and drained. Like a kid who’s overwhelmed. “I didn’t mean it,” he slurred. “Sammy, I didn’t mean it.” Slurred. He was way drunker than anyone had realized. Except maybe Sam.

“I’ve had worse,” Sam said. “You all right?”

Dean looked up. “Jesus, Sam.”

“I have half a mind to take you both down to the station and book you, except I don’t dare put your fingerprints in IAFIS,” Jody said.

“It’s not a big deal,” Sam said.

“Well it is to me!” Jody said. “This is my house!”

“It’s my fault,” Sam said. “Not Dean’s. I…”

Jody and Sam were looking at each other. Claire usually felt more comfortable around Dean than she did Sam. Dean was funny, could take teasing. Sam was shy. But now, having seen Dean…lose it, she felt like she didn’t know these guys at all.

“What is this about?” Jody asked.

“I’m a fucking asshole,” Dean said. “That’s what it’s about.”

Sam was shaking his head and both men suddenly looked, holy shit, Sam looked tearful. “You’re okay. You just need some sleep, all right? You’re okay now. It’s all over.” He looked up at Jody, “Let me just get him to bed. We’ll be out of your hair, I promise.”

“Sam!” Jody said, exasperated.

“Sammy has lost hope,” Dean said out of nowhere.

Sam looked momentarily wide-eyed.

“Things just got a little out of hand, he’s okay now,” Sam said. 

“It’s not your job,” Dean said.

Jody’s lips were set in a grim line, but she didn’t say anything as Sam got Dean on his feet and led him down the hallway to the guest bedroom. He was tender, keeping a big hand under Dean’s elbow as Dean stumbled a little.

“That was fucked up,” Claire breathed.

Jody just shook her head.

#

Claire came up from her room in the basement to get a Coke and Sam and Jody were sitting in the darkened living room. Ice cubes rattled in a glass. Whiskey, probably.

“…builds up and builds up like a pressure cooker,” Sam was saying quietly. “It helps him to let off a little steam.”

“You’re not a punching bag,” Jody said, her voice flat.

“He’s not…it’s because of the shit that’s happened to him, you know?” Sam said. “Hell. The mark. He’s had to do too much. Because of the way we grew up. So, he tamps it down and sometimes he just needs to bleed a little off. I know what it looks like—It’s not…we’re not normal.”

“Says every abuse victim everywhere.”

“…I know.”

Claire waited, silent in the kitchen. She wanted a can of Coke, but she wasn’t sure she wanted it bad enough to hear this.

“It’s not like that,” Sam said. “It’s… I don’t mind. I’ve had a lot worse. And it helps. It really helps.”

Claire couldn’t listen to this anymore. Your elders shouldn’t be this fucked up. She went back down the steps and came up more loudly and this time, everything was quiet.

“Everything okay?” Jody asked from the darkness of the living room.

“Just getting a Coke,” Claire said.

“Sorry you saw that,” Sam said.

Claire didn’t know what to answer, so she grabbed her Coke and went back downstairs.

She didn’t have to end up that fucked up. It was because of all the god shit. Not just hunting. 

Really. 


End file.
